Below, Shepard postulates that "The Demon" by N. F. Pavlov inspired "The Overcoat" and that in some ways Gogol's story is a response to Pavlov's.

On Sunday, February 24, 1852, the epilogue to the tragicomedy which was N. V. Gogol's life was played out in the University Chapel in Moscow. Curiosity seekers, government officials, members of high society—"people who had not wanted to know Gogol during his lifetime," Khomiakov bitterly remarked later—thronged the final rites performed over the writer's emaciated body. Among the crowd in the chapel was Gogol's old acquaintance, N. F. Pavlov (1803-64), a former serf, actor, university student, law clerk, and journalist who had made his way into Moscow's beau monde and had married a wealthy heiress. Several days after the funeral, Pavlov set down his reaction to it in a letter...